In 2007 comic book writer Gary Friedrich sued Marvel, Columbia Pictures, Sony and a long list of other companies over ownership of “Ghost Rider”, comic book character he created, with art by Mike Ploog, that appeared first on Marvel Spotlight #5, in 1972.

Ploog had been hired by Marvel to draw Friedrich’s creation: according to Friedrich, he gave Ploog indications on how the character should have looked, thus making Friedrich more than a “co-creator” of the character. This was reflected in the original comic book credits:

Friedrich claimed ownership of the character that has supposedly “reverted” to him in 2001. This meant particularly getting a fair share of royalties from movie adaptations of the character. Marvel countersued in 2010 since Friedrich was selling Ghost Rider merchandising online and at comic book conventions.
Finally, Friedrich had to apparently surrender to Marvel last year, being ordered to pay $17,000 in damages to the publisher, renouncing to further advertising himself as Ghost Rider creator and stopping the sale of any related merchandise.

One year later, it seems Friedrich’s case will go back to trial: on June 11, 2013, Second Circuit Court of Appeals judge Denny Chin overturned the original decision:

The district court held as a matter of law that plaintiff-counter-defendant-appellant Gary Friedrich assigned any rights he retained in the renewal term of the 1972 Ghost Rider copyrights to the predecessor of defendant-counter-claimant-appellee Marvel Characters, Inc. in a 1978 form work-for-hire contract. We conclude that – 4 –the contract language is ambiguous and that genuine disputes of material fact, as to the parties’ intent and other issues, preclude the granting of judgment as a matter of law.

While judge Chin made interesting statements about the contract language and the fact that a 1978 work-for-hire contract could regulate something that had been created and published 6 years before, it seems something is still missing in all this absurd story.

Judge Chin also says:

The first Ghost Rider comic was published in Marvel Spotlight, Vol. 1, No. 5 (“Spotlight 5”) in April 1972, bearing a copyright notice in favor of “Magazine Management Co., Inc. Marvel Comics Group.”

Here is a scan of the copyright notice on the first page of the comic book:

Before 1989, the U.S., a missing (or wrong) copyright notice would have meant instantly falling into the public domain.
All sorts of popular works, from “Night of the Living Dead” to adult movie “Debbie Does Dallas” suffered issues like that.
The comic book had a copyright notice, at least.

But in those days, before copyright law changed in 1978 and the old 28-years renewal system disappeared, Copyright Office registration was mandatory.

Normally, a renewal request carries the number of a previous copyright registration: it basically says you are applying to extend copyright of a certain work.
Note the absurd line: “Renewal registration for: Not reg.”. There is no number here.How could one “renew” something that was never registered in first place? And why “renew” it since no renewal was necessary under the current American copyright law?

Three years later, in 2010, even Marvel tried to “renew” something that could not be renewed, filing this:

Any copyright, the first term of which is subsisting on January 1, 1978, shall endure for 28 years from the date it was originally secured.

This means no renewal is needed, provided you have “secured” a copyright, originally, and it was still effective on January 1, 1978. But nowhere it says you could recreate a copyright for something that was not properly registered.
Finally, the fact that the work-for-hire contract between Marvel and Friedrich was signed AFTER January 1, 1978 might create further argument for a funny “legal short circuit”.

Let’s go back for a moment to the attempts Friedrich and Marvel did at registering the work with the Copyright Office. Let’s say their lawyers might argue: okay, if we could not renew, we could still be registering a new copyright.

Good idea. But the timeframe to do so, according to the current U.S. copyright law, ended in year 2000.

In conclusion, Marvel, Sony, Columbia and others may not have to pay millions in royalties to Mr. Friedrich. But surely I don’t see why he should be paying damages to anyone for reusing a Public Domain character.

p.s.: free legal advice. In a somewhat similar case, porn movie distributors VCX and Arrow settled out of Court, before a judge could state what the rest of the world already knows (and another judge actually stated in part at the end of the 1980s). That the works they were fighting for, had fallen in the Public Domain.

Born in 1954 to replace Fawcett’s Captain Marvel for the UK market (the “Big Cheese” had suddenly become unavailable to his readers: in the USA, National/DC had won a battle with rival publisher Fawcett over the character, too similar to Superman), Marvelman had been a favourite of British kids for a decade between the 1950s and 1960s. Then it was oblivion, until resurrection on “Warrior” magazine, under Derek (Dez) Skinn‘s direction. This also led to further publications in the USA on Eclipse between the 1980s and 1990s, under the Miracleman name (“Marvel” was definitely a sensitive word, in the American comics industry).

When in 2001 Neil Gaiman announced the formation of Marvels and Miracles, LLC to clear the copyright status of Marvelman/Miracleman and later sued Todd McFarlane over the ownership of some co-created characters, I tried to make some independent research. I had read George Khoury‘s fascinating book Kimota! The Miracleman Companion, published by TwoMorrows in 2001 (an updated “Definitive Edition” is due for release in August 2010), and through it had examined some of the information and versions given by some of the main “actors” in the Marvelman saga.

I performed websearches and tried to compare information from that book with data found online. In the end I checked the status of a company called L.Miller and Sons Ltd. (not “Son” but “Sons”, but apparently it seems to be a publishing company, so there is a good chance that we are talking of the same Miller company that went bankrupt in the 1960s), which turned out to be dissolved in 1990, many years after ceasing publications.

I came out with a few ideas; first the two obvious bits:
a) Marvelman started as a Captain Marvel clone (some of the characters are identical to their Fawcett counterparts);
b) it was Len Miller asking Mick Anglo to create that clone not to cease publication of some popular comic book titles;

then there are some infos that can be taken out of the Kimota! book:
c) Mick Anglo (directly or through his collaborators) was performing work-for-hire for Len Miller’s company; copyright law certainly wasn’t his main area of expertise.
d) it is dubious that Derek Skinn acquired anything when starting to publish Marvelman in Warrior. According to what Alan Moore suggested in his Kimota! interview, the rights could still be with the “official receiver” after Miller went into bankruptcy.

Finally, my own little, above-mentioned, discovery:
e) a company called L.Miller & Sons Ltd. (not “& Son” like often quoted) was dissolved in the United Kingdom in 1990. Apparently, nobody acquired its assets.

What conclusions can be drawn out of all this?If Marvelman is heavily plagiarised from Captain Marvel, it is basically a bootleg of a Fawcett/DC character. It now belongs to DC and always belonged. ’nuff said.

If Marvelman had some level of originality/copyrightability, it was a L.Miller & Sons copyright, created/written/drawn by Mick Anglo’s studios as work-for-hire. Anglo never owned anything as he says in his own words on the Kimota! interview.Skinn sort of bought Anglo’s silence through small payments for some reprints, in the 1980s. But certainly didn’t acquire any real rights from him or other sources.

If Miller owned the copyright, Skinn should have bought the rights off the “official receiver”. A bankruptcy court, since L.Miller & Sons went bankrupt around 1966. Neither Skinn nor anyone else ever provided any evidence to have done so.

Marvelman and its subsequent incarnation Miracleman stayed with L.Miller, as copyrights.

All of the subsequent passages involving people like Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Eclipse Comics, Todd McFarlane (who tried to recycle the character in his “Spawn” comics and even produced a Miracleman resin statue) and other people have no value, since all of those “shares” that were traded originated from Skinn. Who had nothing in his hands, in first place.

And of course Marvel acquiring the rights on the character from Mick Anglo (through Emotiv Records in Glasgow) is even more dubious, since Anglo didn’t own them in first place.

Miller’s company was dissolved in 1990: since nobody acquired anything, according to the British law, its assets now belong to the Crown.

This is what I discovered years ago and tried to get to Neil Gaiman via some Internet forum. I have no idea if he ever saw that.
And I don’t have 100% proof that my version is the definitive one: the L.Miller & Sons company I’ve found might not exactly be the same “L.Miller & Son” mentioned by many other sources. Someone in UK might go and check all of this better, and find evidence supporting my vision or denying it. Provided that some further tracks can still be found after all these years.

One last element needs to be checked; recently, in April 2010, my attention was caught by some bits of the Marvelman entry in Wikipedia (English language). Those bits suggested that another UK publisher who worked mostly with cheap reprints of American comics for British audiences, Alan Class Ltd., had acquired at least printing plates (if not the rights) to Marvelman, directly from L.Miller & Son.

Knowing that in 2005 Alan Class’ personal collection was put on sale by UK dealer 30th Century Comics, I contacted them.Will Morgan of 30th Century Comics was so kind to reply:

Thank you for your enquiry. Unfortunately, you are misinformed.

A journalist asked a similar question last year for an article in Back Issue magazine, and I asked Alan Class at that time if he had any involvement with Marvelman. His response then, to the best of my recollection, was;

“No, I didn’t have anything to do with Marvelman. When Len Miller, the publisher, died, I heard that some of his properties might be available, but by the time I got to his offices, virtually everything had already gone.”

– those may not have been his exact words (it’s been a little time now), but those are certainly his recollections as he told them to me.

No Marvelman material has ever been reprinted in an Alan Class comic.

I think the Wikipedia confusion arises from the fact that Alan Class and Len Miller were active during much of the same period (mid 1950’s to early 1960’s), and produced similar lines of black & white comics primarily reprinting US material.

There were several other similar publishers (Strato, Arnold, etc.) during the period US comics were largely undistributed in the UK, and while there were links between many of them, Miller and Class were two separate and distinct publishers.

This solves one problem and keeps at least Alan Class and his company out of the enormous mess, but of course doesn’t clarify what happened to Miller’s assets (who eventually acquired them?).

Personally, I prefer to believe my finding to be the ultimate solution: it would be just natural – and somewhat poetic – that the only true British superhero belonged directly to the British Crown. :)

And since in the meantime Marvel was acquired by Disney, one could anticipate what we will see at some point in the future: high-level negotiations between Mickey Mouse and Queen Elizabeth over Marvelman/Miracleman’s rights; that’s an eventuality, and it wouldn’t be the most absurd bit of the Marvelman legal saga.

VirCL: I decided to try interviewing you after reading Astro City #1 and #2… #2, in particular, was one of the best stories I’ve read in years.

KB: Thank you; I’m glad you’re enjoying it.

VirCL: 1) Have you ever been interviewed by e-mail? :-)

KB: A couple of times, yes.

VirCL: 2) “Who the heck is Kurt Busiek??!?” (i.e. where are you from, how old are
you and other boring questions)

KB: Born in Boston, Massachusetts, September 16, 1960. Grew up in the Boston area,
mostly Lexington, MA. Attended Syracuse University (in Syracuse, NY), 1988-1992, graduating with a BA in English Literature. Started selling comics scripts upon graduation, to Marvel and DC Comics. Been working as a freelance writer ever since, plus have been an editor, sales manager and literary agent. Currently a full-time writer. Anything else?

VirCL: 3) What was your favourite comic book, when you where a child?

KB: The kids in my family weren’t allowed to bring comics home when I was a kid, so my favorites were the ones my mother thought were good enough to buy for the family — ASTERIX and TINTIN albums. I also liked Batman a lot, but didn’t get to read many American comics. Once I hit age 14 and stopped following that particular rule, my favorite comics were DAREDEVIL and the original X-MEN.

VirCL: 4) How were you involved in the comic industry?

KB: During high school, I was headed for a career as a computer programmer and discovered I didn’t much care for it. Around that time, I realized that people actually got paid to write comic books, and that sounded like more fun.
So I started practicing, writing and drawing comics with my friend Scott McCloud (who later created ZOT! and UNDERSTANDING COMICS).
I wrote for the fan press and I had a lot of letter published in Marvel letters pages, so by the time I started showing script samples, the editors had some idea that I was a reasonably intelligent guy.
I sold my first story (to DC) just before college graduation, and started writing my first ongoing series (POWER MAN AND IRON FIST, for Marvel) later that summer. And it’s just gone on from there…

VirCL: 5) (The stupid question everyone’s asking since the end of “Marvels“) Will we ever see “Marvels II“?

KB: I think so, but I’m not the right guy to ask. Marvel is producing a MARVELS II, written by Chuck Dixon and painted by Tristan Schane.
I think they’ve had some production delays, but the book should come out eventually.
But ASTRO CITY is _my_ follow-up to MARVELS, so that’s where my energy’s been concentrated.

VirCL: 6) I liked the figure of Samaritan… I think he’s the incarnation of a famous Yellow Kid sentence: “Gee, I’m so busy I haven’t got time to do anything or anybody” :-)
I noticed a similarity with the opening episode of Alan Moore‘s Miracleman (“A dream of flying”): were you influenced in some way by that story?

KB: Not directly — Miracleman opens with a dream that’s really Mike Moran trying to recapture suppressed memories, so it’s not the same sort of thing. But when I realized that the story I was considering for AC #1 opened and closed with a dream, and that Miracleman‘s first story was “A Dream of Flying” and Neil Gaiman‘s Sandman is largely dream-concerned, I figured it made a nice tip of the hat or something. So I called the story, “In Dreams” as a nod to both Alan and Neil. The actual story had been conceived years earlier, at the urging of Scott McCloud. It was my idea for one of his infamous 24-hour comic experiments, and while I never got around to doing it as a 24-hour comic, I held on to the story because I liked it and wanted to do it somewhere.
Turned out ASTRO CITY was the place.